Description

Isle of Grain, Kent.

L/S interior of a classroom, there are students sitting round the outside and a couple of blackboards in the background. The instructor is stood in front of a large barrel, he draws some liquid out of it through a long pipette and puts it in a glass. He replaces the pipette in the barrel. He is teaching his students, who are all new Customs and Excise officers, how to accurately measure a cask of rum.

The students get up and walk over to a table where a measuring gauge is placed in the glass. C/U of a student picking up a round mirror and reading the gauge through the glass. M/S of four other students making notes.

L/S of an oil tanker docked at the Isle of Grain. L/S pan down the ship to show a customs officer walking towards it. M/S of him climbing up the ladder onto the ship. M/S of him climbing over the rails and shaking hands with an officer, he walks up another ladder to an upper deck.

M/S from the deck of the ship looking out to sea. The Customs man appears at the top of another set of steps and shakes hands with the captain; another officer climbs up behind him and walks off to the left of the shot.

M/S of the captain and the Customs man leaning against the rail, the captain puts on his spectacles and looks at some papers he is holding, he hands them to the Customs man. C/U of the captain looking at the papers. M/S of the two men shaking hands. The Customs man climbs back down the ladder, another man passes him on the way up. The captain waves him off and leans on the rail.

L/S of a scene on a lower deck, several men are walking about and one of them is pulling up samples of crude oil from a pipe in the floor. There is a pipe in the background and the Customs officer walks up to inspect the oil. C/U of the officer picking up a bottle from a crate and taking the lid off, he sniffs at the oil and replaces the lid he then bends down to put the bottle back. M/S of him putting the bottle in the crate and saying goodbye to the oil man. He walks away from the scene.

L/S of him walking to another part of the ship, C/U of him looking round and climbing up some steps. M/S of him walking towards a door where he takes out a black jacket and starts putting it on while he walks round the corner.

L/S of him walking past two large round storage tanks, a Land Rover drives past in the foreground. M/S of him walking up some steps towards the tanks, they each hold 6 million gallons of crude oil. A man there hands him a pair of gloves and they walk up the steps together and disappear down the other side.

L/S from the top of a ladder of the two men climbing up, M/S of the men at the edge of the tank, the work man dips a measuring device, like a big tape measure, over the side into the tank. M/S of the two men at the top of the tank. L/S from the top of the tank of the measure going down into the hole. M/S of the man starting to wind the measure up again, L/S of it coming back out of the tank. C/U of point on the gauge where the oil comes to. C/U of the two men talking while he reels in the measuring gauge. The two men walk away.

10 telling images selected from British Pathé's extensive WWI footage. 'The war to end all wars' was a war without parallel: over 70 million military personnel were involved and over 17 million people died.